Just got my 50mm f/1.8 and took my first pictures of actual people!!! lol

philipgonzales3 · Mar 27, 2014

Pictures are of my girlfriend and stepson.

philipgonzales3 · Mar 27, 2014

Sorry this should probably be posted the the people gallery section. I am not too familiar with the layout of the forum yet. Feel free to move it. Sorry once again. Any feedback is appreciated.

TreeofLifeStairs · Mar 27, 2014

I would have gone for a tighter crop on all three and blurred the background on the third one. It's a bit distracting.

philipgonzales3 · Mar 28, 2014

OK cool so crop the photos instead of just posting them straight from the camera lol. And I had the aperture all the way open, so any other way to blur it? Post Processing? maybe I should have not picked a background with a reflective door? haha.

Designer · Mar 28, 2014

All three of these would be better framed vertically. You got the background blurred in the first one, because the background was far away. The third one the background is too close for maximum blur. Also, watch out for reflections in the glass, as those are distracting. You need to learn to watch for all of that while composing your shot. Position you model in front of a less distracting background.

I'm not crazy about flare as in #2.

Steve5D · Mar 28, 2014

If you apply background blur in Photoshop, it can be really noticeable. It can be done, though, but it just takes time to do it effectively. Having your subject standing further away from whatever's in the background, and shooting wide open, will help.

The 50mm f/1.8 is a great lens for the money...

philipgonzales3 · Mar 28, 2014

OK so I should work on turning my camera sideways more and the background choice was poor. Use backgrounds further away to get good bokeh, and don't shoot anything reflective. I like the sunflare picture just because it was an "accident". I literally pointed the camera up towards her while she was walking away by me and the sky came out overexposed and white which I thought was cool. I guess I'm easily impressed lol.

philipgonzales3 · Mar 28, 2014

Well I think it's going to take me a while to figure out what good composition is and how to achieve it, but darnit I'm trying lol. At least my subject isn't dead center in all the pictures now. baby steps I guess lol. Does anyone think I passed up granny and her good 'ol point and shoot yet? I also played around with cropping and adjusting the exposure, removing highlights, contrast, vividness, shadows, etc a bit. By playing around I mean I adjust the sliders to what I thought looked good and cut off parts of the pictures that I thought didn't look good. At least I'm learning the software a bit. Any other suggestions? anything that I am doing totally wrong that I can correct now? thanks for your time to help me out a bit.

to reduced the overexposure of the background when shooting from shaded to bright should I have used a higher aperture?

Pretty sure I overexposed her?

I think she's ready to stop taking pics but I kind of like it.

I like this one.

Couldn't help it, right down the middle lol.

480sparky · Mar 28, 2014

philipgonzales3 said:
.........

to reduced the overexposure of the background when shooting from shaded to bright should I have used a higher aperture?

If you adjusted the exposure to darken the background, you will also make the dark areas of the image even darker. You will end up losing details in the shadows, such as around her eyes. She'll end up with 'raccoon eyes'. You'll also just turn her hair a big black blob.

philipgonzales3 · Mar 28, 2014

480sparky said:
philipgonzales3 said:

.........

to reduced the overexposure of the background when shooting from shaded to bright should I have used a higher aperture?

Click to expand...

If you adjusted the exposure to darken the background, you will also make the dark areas of the image even darker. You will end up losing details in the shadows, such as around her eyes. She'll end up with 'raccoon eyes'. You'll also just turn her hair a big black blob.

hmmm so Lighting seems super important in photography. If I used flash would this have helped even the foreground and the background or is it just a bad location for the shot? I imagine the over exposed background is undesirable for a "regular" photo?

Very dumb question but wouldn't this photo seem more "balanced" in a regular point in shoot or a cell phone camera? If so why is that? and no one answered the question yet!! do you think that I've exceeded the average point and shoot photo yet? :mrgreen: you can give it to me straight. :sexywink:

IronMaskDuval · Mar 28, 2014

philipgonzales3 said:
hmmm so Lighting seems super important in photography. If I used flash would this have helped even the foreground and the background or is it just a bad location for the shot? I imagine the over exposed background is undesirable for a "regular" photo? Very dumb question but wouldn't this photo seem more "balanced" in a regular point in shoot or a cell phone camera? If so why is that? and no one answered the question yet!! do you think that I've exceeded the average point and shoot photo yet? :mrgreen: you can give it to me straight.

Use your flash to light the face and control your shutter speed for controlling background exposure.

480sparky · Mar 28, 2014

philipgonzales3 said:
hmmm so Lighting seems super important in photography. If I used flash would this have helped even the foreground and the background or is it just a bad location for the shot? I imagine the over exposed background is undesirable for a "regular" photo?

Very dumb question but wouldn't this photo seem more "balanced" in a regular point in shoot or a cell phone camera? If so why is that? and no one answered the question yet!! do you think that I've exceeded the average point and shoot photo yet? :mrgreen: you can give it to me straight.

There's a couple ways to balance the background & subject lighting. One, already mentioned, is to use a flash. I'd stay away from the on-board flash for this one as it would just create a bright spot on her glasses. Off-camera flash is needed here. You'll need to keep your shutter slow enough to synch with the flash, and that means you'll be stopping the lens down. This may bring the background more into focus, so a low ISO is preferred.

Another solution is a reflector. You can buy 5-in-1 reflectors fairly cheap, or you can just use a piece of white foam board from the hobby store.

Designer · Mar 29, 2014

philipgonzales3 said:
OK so I should work on turning my camera sideways more and the background choice was poor. Use backgrounds further away to get good bokeh, and don't shoot anything reflective. I like the sunflare picture just because it was an "accident". I literally pointed the camera up towards her while she was walking away by me and the sky came out overexposed and white which I thought was cool. I guess I'm easily impressed lol.

Don't listen to anything I have to say. Flare is something many photographers do on purpose, and it is apparently very popular, it's just not my favorite style.

Derrel · Mar 29, 2014

Sun flare CAN be beautiful, Phillip! As far as the shot of the woman with the rectangular-framed eyeglasses: I'm not sure if a P&S digitial would have made a more-balanced photo out of that scene, but it's possible that the shot could have been exposed a bit differently, and then post-processed a bit to make a more-balanced photo. There are two basic ways to handle STRONG backlighting + open shade like that. First way is to expose for the open shade, and totally blow the background out to white/white-yellow...your shot is close to that, but yet SHE still needs a bit more exposure, to see detail in her eyes. If done in-camera, adding MORE exposure by slowing down the shutter speed, or by elevating the ISO a full stop value (say from 200 to 400 ISO) would totally blow out the background. The second way is to expose mostly for the brightest tones, meaning the background, and then in software to "lift the shadows" by adding "digital fill light" or "shadow recovery". A third way is to have a reflector below and in front of the subject, to actually ADD MORE "real light" to the person seated in the open, shaded area.

THe shot of the older woman is STRONG backlighting; the shot of your GF in open shade with the green lawn behind is not nearly as strong, and it is closer in exposure than the shot of the older woman.

Anyway...yeah...thing about shooting some "talls"!!!! And have fun, keep on enjoying the new 50mm lens. Shoot as much and as often as you can. And yes, as you said, lighting is super important in photography. Photography means "light writing" or "writing with light"...lighting is indeed a BIG component in photography.

philipgonzales3 · Mar 29, 2014

Thanks Derrel, I will definitely keep shooting and having fun. Being this is the first time I've ever picked up any camera really, I feel that I am already doing what I intended to do with it. That is take some "decent" photos of my fish, my family, random objects, and being a nerd learning to better understand how the hardware and software work to produce an image and how to "play" with these settings. These photos are already what I consider to be decent at this point in time. As in, I can clearly see my girlfriend/fish in the pictures and there are no fingers in the way, and I can adjust my settings to a certain point so that the objects I am taking pictures of are visible. <---- low standards=amazed every time. It's all about having fun and learning for me as I want to pick it up as a hobby. Looking at these photos and comparing them to 90% of other peoples photos on Facebook for instance, obviously these pictures look better than other peoples cell phone pics and hopefully their point and shoot cameras. There is definitely room for learning and improvement, so my pictures can only get better from here. I am going to look into purchasing a bounce flash and learning more about lighting while I continue to learn how to take better pictures.

Sorry for rambling on there, in case you just skipped down to this paragraph, the main point of the top paragraph was I am happy with how the photos are coming along and will continue on improving them lol.